There are some, who would be inclined to regard the servile
pliancy of the executive to a prevailing current, either
in the community, or in the Legislature, as its best recommendation.
But such men entertain very crude notions, as
well of the purposes for which government was instituted,
as of the true means by which the public happiness may
be promoted. The republican principle demands, that the
deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct
of those to whom they entrust the management of
their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance
to every sudden breese of passion, or to every
transient impulse which the people may receive from the
arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their
interests. It is a just observation, that the people commonly
intend the PUBLIC GOOD. This often applies to their very
errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator,
who should pretend that they always reason right about the
means of promoting it. They know from experience, that
they sometimes err; and the wonder is, that they so seldom
err as they do; beset as they continually are by the wiles of
parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious,
the avaricious, the desperate; by the artifices of men, who
possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of
those who seek to possess, rather than to deserve it. When
occasions present themselves in which the interests of the
people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty
of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians
of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion,
in order to give them time and opportunity for more
cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited, in
which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from
very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has
procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men,
who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them
at the peril of their displeasure.

But however inclined we might be to insist upon an unbounded
complaisance in the executive to the inclinations
of the people, we can with no propriety contend for a like
complaisance to the humors of the Legislature. The latter
may sometimes stand in opposition to the former; and at
other times the people may be entirely neutral. In either
supposition, it is certainly desirable that the executive
should be in a situation to dare to act his own opinion with
vigor and decision.